This fascinating volume opens with the 2016 'Havana syndrome' episode at the US Embassy in Cuba, when embassy staff were reportedly targeted by infrasound weapons. Although the claim was later dismissed as 'fake news', fears of covert sensory warfare continue to circulate in an era that has witnessed poisonings and other clandestine attacks associated with a renewed Cold War. The collection uses a series of case studies to explore how the Cold War shaped sensory experience and how the senses themselves became tools of this conflict that lasted four decades. As a work of cultural history, it follows innovative studies of war and the senses, not least Mark Smith's work on the American Civil War.

Unlike Smith, however, the contributors do not attempt to address all five senses in every chapter. Instead, each explores a particular sensory dimension of the Cold War, revealing a conflict fought not only through military power but also through politics, culture, and propaganda. Spanning Cuba, Germany, Romania, China, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, the volume combines global history with emotional history and microhistory, rehumanising a conflict often reduced to ideology and geopolitics.

The collection is organised into three chronological sections. The first examines the early Cold War, when rival powers sought to seduce, persuade, and manipulate one another. The second explores the sensory consequences of partition and propaganda regimes. The final section turns to proxy wars and military conflict, where sensory techniques reached their most intense and destructive forms.

Part One begins with a study of the 'Eisenhower packages' distributed in Berlin from 1953 to foster dissent against Moscow. Beyond alleviating shortages, these aid packages promoted American consumerism and reinforced gender norms that Soviet ideals had challenged. A chapter on Polish perfumes demonstrates how olfactory experience could become politically charged, contrasting sophisticated Polish scents with Soviet products often disparaged as smelling more like 'insecticides' than luxury goods. Cordoba's contribution examines organised tours of communist China, where friendship associations used carefully curated sights, sounds, and tastes to counter Western perceptions of communist backwardness. Fenemore's seductively written chapter on telephone operators offers an original perspective on Cold War communications, shifting attention away from wiretaps and surveillance technology to the women who occupied the lowest levels of the security apparatus.

The second section explores sensory borders and the politics of information. Lekner's haunting chapter examines the loudspeaker towers deployed between China and Taiwan from 1953 to 1992. Broadcasting military songs and propaganda messages, they created a persistent sonic landscape that marked political division even when their content was inaudible. Ritivoi then investigates the distinctive soundscape of Radio Free Europe in Romania, where broadcasts provided listeners with access to youth culture and a sense of symbolic liberation. By 1980, the station reached a quarter of the population, and attacks on its Munich headquarters testified to its perceived effectiveness. Torán's chapter analyses Spanish reporting on Korea and Cuba under Franco, demonstrating how Cold War conflicts were framed to reinforce anti-communism and justify repression at home. Mrozek's study of the Berlin Wall adds an olfactory dimension, showing how mysterious smells periodically provoked fears of death and contamination, illustrating the power of scent to intensify political anxiety.

The final section explores sensory deprivation, mind control, military training, and battlefield technologies. Grunden's chapter examines narco-hypnosis and other projects inspired by fears of brainwashing, popularised by works such as The Manchurian Candidate. Richter's investigates the sensory conditioning of German conscripts, trained to endure gunfire, hunger, exhaustion, and harsh living conditions, while Spackman analyses a chemical detection device used in Vietnam, arguing that it served not only a military purpose but also a public relations one, reassuring Americans that technology could expose an otherwise invisible enemy. The volume concludes with Mirschel's rich unpacking of Soviet visual propaganda in Afghanistan, where carefully curated images of modern, clean-shaven Afghan soldiers battling 'backward' mujahideen obscured the realities of a costly and brutal war. Only with glasnost did this carefully constructed image begin to unravel.

Taken together, these chapters demonstrate the diverse ways in which the senses became instruments of persuasion, control, resistance, and warfare. The result is a highly original and significant contribution to sensory studies. Creatively organised and consistently engaging, this is a volume that offers fresh perspectives on the Cold War and informative lessons to prospective students of sensory history.

Jonathan Reinarz